


i love you, don't you mind?

by arizayna



Category: One Direction (Band)
Genre: Abuse, Lots of Angst, M/M, and more sad things, and weed, i actually have no idea, i'm sorry i can't explain this fic, im sorry, this wasn't supposed to be as depressing as this lmao, trigger warning?, uhhhhhh
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-05-31
Updated: 2014-05-31
Packaged: 2018-01-27 19:44:43
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,191
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1720328
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/arizayna/pseuds/arizayna
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>this is why they do it, he realizes, pressing niall against the countertop and pushing his thighs open like freeway entries – it’s because they’re one another’s emergency handles, they grab onto each other when the rest of the world breaks and falls into pieces. sometimes they pull too hard and it hurts, it always fucking hurts, but there’s something else they both know that they’ll never find anywhere else.</p>
            </blockquote>





	i love you, don't you mind?

**Author's Note:**

  * For [zayniall](https://archiveofourown.org/users/zayniall/gifts).



> hello! it's been a while since i wrote an actual thing and i don't insist that this fic is, like, a thing but oh well. it's a little bit angsty and shares similar themes of violence/abuse as my other fics? uhh yeah that's it tbh. i hope you like it!!! ♡

\--

It always starts in a dream – the deep purple, feverish kind. Some kind of torn skin, and empty bottles thrown into the corner. He’s high again and everything tastes like fire and snow. This love is the kind of love that’s constantly trying to outrun itself, trying to catch midnight planes, trying to split into the ground like a fissure. This is all static and sound, moving visions of silhouettes and violet bodies. This is where he finds himself looking for the parts of the story that hurt most.

Zayn finds himself worrying more about the restlessness than the awakening.

-

So this is love.

Zayn slams the plate down onto the ground and feels the shattering echo up his hands, erupting through his veins. There’s silence for a moment, where he stares into the two large blue eyes in front of him, like round dish bowls filled with Caribbean water.

He feels like they’ve had this argument a thousand times before, and their hands are stained dirty with all the words they’re both dying to say.

(Zayn: _I love you and I wish I were better for you._  
Niall: _I love you but I want to leave_.)

Niall’s sighing and reaching for the cloth, the bruise in his skin from last week flowering across his collarbone, spiraling upwards like a tattoo. “I think you need to go to bed, Zayn.”

Zayn stands there and watches him. His hands are trembling, but he can’t remember why. “How much longer are you going to do this?”

“What?” Niall pauses. “Do what?”

“Clean up my messes,” Zayn says, chest growing heavy as he talks, the words falling like stones back into his lungs. “Pretend that you’re the one at fault.”

Niall stops wiping the countertop and looks up at Zayn, pushing fine blond hair out of his eyes, weary and tired, and Zayn thinks you’ve never looked so fucking beautiful to me but he doesn’t say anything.

“I don’t know,” Niall sighs.

“Why do you do it?”

“I don’t know,” he says again, looking away like this is something to be ashamed of. “I thought I did. But I don’t.”

The words slam into Zayn like a train, knocking the air out of his lungs. “You want to leave. You think about it everyday. I know you do.”

“Of course I want to leave, Zayn!” Niall’s suddenly raising his voice, throwing the cloth back onto the countertop. “Look at this! Look at what you do, what _we_ do!”

“So go!” Zayn’s shouting back, but it’s not because he’s angry. He just wants his words to be loud enough to be heard above all the pandemonium in their chests. “Why do you stay here and do this for me everyday?”

“Because I love you!” Niall spits, shoving the broken porcelain with his feet. “I fucking love you, that’s why I stay here! I don’t care how many plates you break or how many times you hit me, because – because you’re the only person I’ve ever felt this way with and I hate it because I could be with _anyone_ else right now, but none of it would feel like this!”

Zayn’s heart is hammering, and he feels the erratic thuds all the way from his pounding temples to his weakening knees. They’ve never talked about it like this before, and suddenly it’s like the fire inside him has gone out, the light of the moon turning black, every single flower in their garden wilting under the supernova of emotions he’s barely able to contain.

He moves forward and Niall’s body latches onto his, and then the fires are back, but they’re not burning him this time, they’re burning for him, and the moon is pouring its light like milky paint over everything, and all the flowers are blooming inside him.

This is why they do it, he realizes, pressing Niall against the countertop and pushing his thighs open like freeway entries – it’s because they’re one another’s emergency handles, they grab onto each other when the rest of the world breaks and falls into pieces. Sometimes they pull too hard and it hurts, it always fucking hurts, but there’s something else they both know that they’ll never find anywhere else.

Niall’s mouth washes into his like retreating ocean waves, hands foaming around his body, unbuttoning their shirts and pulling at his jeans. Zayn turns Niall around, kissing down his neck, whispering _I love you I love you I love you_ with every one, his wrists anchoring around the smaller boy’s waist. He pulls him backward, flesh on flesh, grinding himself into hardness. The heat between their bodies is nearly unbearable, sand-colored skin sizzling under his palms.

And this is where it starts – this is how it always does. They kiss with their teeth and find love pouring hot like blood from their throats and chests. And Zayn likes that, because this is where the love is strongest, where it’s powerful and raw and painful, this is where he can dig into the flesh with his bare hands and see it with his eyes. The evidence is there for him; mapped out like geometry, an ever-growing Fibonacci sequence of glass and eyes shining with headlights and looking at him like he’s special.

They only fuck after taking both their clothes and skins off, they only cry over sins they will commit over and over again, they only catch kisses if they know that they can kill them later. And that’s the difference between murder and love, Zayn thinks.

You only murder someone if you can no longer stand to love them.

\--

Zayn gets high and goes to sleep dreaming of knives and flesh and a beautiful boy’s blood on his hands. It pours like an ocean wave over every crevice of his skin, dancing in flames of red and rust. There are explosions and car crashes and Zayn shuts his eyes to the world.

When he wakes up he’s in a hospital emergency room with bandages round his wrists, and Niall is crying beside the bed.

\---

They don’t talk about it, later.

Zayn says _I didn’t mean it_ and _I’d never think of leaving you_ and _I’m sorry I’m sorry I’m so fucking sorry_ but the words pile up like dust and get brushed away into the corner of the room before Niall can hear them.

The only thing Niall asks is, “Why you this time? Why not me?”

Zayn wants to punch something but he keeps his fists under the wooden table, scarred from all the times he’s smashed glasses on it. He’s tired and his body is weak from the medication, and love seems like a signpost in a country that he’ll never visit. He doesn’t want to argue. Doesn’t want to explain how he’s afraid that the next time he breaks Niall there won’t be anything left to pick up.

The hastily cooked stew sits in the bowl in front of him.

“You wanted to die,” Niall says.

“I was high,” Zayn’s voice is gritty, it reminds him of broken bicycles. “I didn’t know what I was doing.”

“No, you wanted to die,” Niall repeats.

“Why would I want to die?”

“I don’t know, you fucking tell me,” Niall raises his hands, shoving his bowl away from him. “Why did I have to find you there choking on the bathtub water and bleeding to death?”

“It wasn’t like that,” Zayn insists.

“Yes, it was. And the worst part about all of this,” Niall gestures round the table, “is that you’re going to go upstairs and do your fucking sniff and walk around the house like none of it was your fault.”

“It’s not like that,” Zayn’s voice breaks suddenly, like the warbled dissonance of rain. The words he wants to say seem to be coming on too fast, too large. “It’s not –“

And then, for the first time since all this started, he’s crying – heavy, noisy sobs that start in his chest and flood down his face. He’s not sure why but he thinks it might have to do with the fact that everything he does feels like an exit wound. He thinks about why he tried to kill himself and why he will never tell Niall– he thinks about the way Niall’s already beside him, wiping his face and whispering _shh, shhh_ into his skin.

Zayn sits there for twenty minutes, shaking in Niall’s arms, crying until his eyes burn.

Later, they clean up the table together, and don’t mention anything afterwards. The bandages come off after a week, and Niall’s the one who throws them out.

\--

Zayn thinks Niall is beautiful when he’s high.

Niall is under him, already dazed out of his senses, smelling like cheap weed and wood smoke. A small fire burns beside them to keep the cold out, and the ocean is crashing onto the cool sand a few meters away.

Zayn leans forward so that Niall’s pushed all the way down with his back against the sand. His eyes are rimmed-red, the pupils dilated but looking uncannily alert. “You’re warm,” he murmurs, palms shifting slowly under Niall’s shirt to rest on the heated skin underneath.

“Mm, and you’re cold,” Niall smiles easily, the blue of his eyes reflecting the flickers of flame beside them. “Like icccccccce,” he holds the word out on a hiss, and then breaks off into a laugh.

Zayn kisses Niall’s jaw, tasting the salty skin with his tongue. “I love you.”

Niall nudges him away. “Liar.”

Zayn kisses him again, going for the mouth this time. “I swear on my life.”

“Okay,” Niall laughs, pulls him in by the cheeks and kisses him hard, so hard that it almost hurts.

The ocean keeps crashing, a distant lulling noise in the background. The sun has long since disappeared, but Zayn sees enough with the fire flickering close by. He moves his mouth down Niall’s neck, making him squirm.

“Fuck off,” Niall giggles, hands scrabbling to push Zayn away. “That’s ticklish.”

Zayn smiles at the way Niall’s just lying there and gurgling like a baby. He’s so beautiful and he’ll never know. Zayn’s lips pause at an old bruise, fading but still visible – soft pink sheens under the skin. It looks like a blot of overturned ink, like mistakes and sins that he wishes he could take back.

Niall’s fingers tilt Zayn’s head back up, blue eyes locking with gold. “I love you, Zayn.”

“What are you smiling at?” Zayn asks, lips lifting softly.

“I’m happy,” Niall sighs, his chest falling at the sound, and the word sounds light and filled with air. “About us.”

“What about us?” Zayn presses another kiss into the old bruise, like an apology, a confession.

“Can we just –“ Niall lets out another sigh and throws his arms out to the side, letting Zayn rest his head on his chest. “Can we stay like this all the time?”

“Yeah, I’d like to,” Zayn says quietly, listening to the constant thud behind Niall’s ribs.

“Always?”

“Always,” Zayn repeats, one arm reaching out to intertwine their fingers. Niall’s hand is soft, his touch gentle.

Zayn really does wish it can be like this all the time. But it isn’t.

\--

Does time heal its own wounds? Does it dab ambrosia on its scraped knees or does it dig knives into its bullet holes? Does it scrub blood off the floors or does it find excuses to pretend its not there? Does it love someone who ruins it, or does it prefer ruining itself, ripping at threads until its bones fall apart?

\--

Two weeks later the coffee’s gone stale and the waitress is trying hard not to stare at the streaks of purple and blue that mark Niall’s collarbones and throat. Zayn hasn’t touched his bread or soup; Niall hasn’t touched him since last night.

Zayn doesn’t remember much, doesn’t want to remember the savage anger and hot, electric red filling him. He remembers trying to kiss Niall, but his teeth cut through to the bone, robbing his marrow and leaving him unconscious instead.

In the morning Zayn takes him out for breakfast. They sit across each other; oceans between them while the memories of last night replay themselves over in their minds.

“Does it still hurt?” Zayn asks quietly, eyes constantly returning to the constellation of bruises.

“No.”

“You’re lying,” Zayn says.

“It doesn’t hurt.”

“I saw what I did,” Zayn’s words taste numb. “And I didn’t –“

“Don’t,” Niall interrupts, subconsciously trying to pull his clothes over the marks. “I don’t want to talk about it.”

Zayn looks at Niall, but all he can see is the way he lay there last night, bloodied and bruised, crying while Zayn threw tornado after tornado at him. This is how they know they’re dying; this is the silent possession of empty vessels and ruptured veins. The next thing they know, they’ll be pouring into thunderstorms and digging for coal-stained grit.

And that’s the thing about disaster-prone love. It has bright eyes and likes to throw itself into the flames over and over and over again – it doesn’t learn. Ever.

Zayn thinks that Niall should learn.

\--


End file.
